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Abstract

U.S. forest product exports were negatively impacted by the U.S. trade war with China in 2018 and 2019, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Muhammad and Taylor (2020) note that the pandemic had a significant impact on U.S. and Tennessee forest product exports due to supply and demand disruptions in the global market for finished wood products (e.g., furniture) and the interrelated market for raw materials and inputs (e.g., logs and lumber). These effects were in addition to the negative impact of China’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. timber (Muhammad et al., 2022). In 2021, U.S. companies expected a recovery due to the U.S. Phase One Trade Agreement with China signed on January 2020, which included exemptions from related retaliatory tariff for forest products shipped to China (Inouye, 2020). In addition, the lifting of pandemic-imposed measures such as port closures and shutdowns in construction and manufacturing suggested a recovery for U.S. exports overall (Susskind and Vines, 2020). In this report, we focus on the post-pandemic period and its impacts on Tennessee forest product exports. We examine the export changes in 2021 (relative to 2020) across destination countries and product categories, and further assess the full economic impact of export sales on income and jobs at the state level. The impacts of the trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. and Tennessee forestry exports have been discussed in previous reports (Muhammad and Taylor, 2020; Muhammad and Smith, 2020; and Muhammad et al., 2022). Forest product exports from 2018 to 2021 at the national, regional and state level are reported in Table 1. From 2018 to 2020, U.S. forest product exports decreased by $2.2 billion. In 2021, however, exports increased by $2.1 billion when compared to the previous year. The increase was mostly in southern states ($829 million), followed by Western states ($677 million). The gains in 2021 were a welcomed recovery from the decrease in exports the previous years.

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